- Inga Witscher: One of the very best things
about living on a farm is growing your own food.
When you're eating from your garden,
you can really be eating healthy foods from healthy soils.
So what you put into your garden
with composting and cover cropping
and really building that nutrient-dense soil,
you're gonna get out, not just in healthy food,
but in tasty food.
And that's why I love growing good ingredients,
because you can cook with it simply.
And one of the simplest ways
is by using all of those ingredients
in a delicious bacon tart.
So I'm gonna use the potatoes from my garden
that I dug a little bit earlier,
I'm gonna use some delicious kale,
and I'm also gonna add in a fresh onion,
a little bit of garlic of course,
and finally, some of our very own cheese
made from the milk from our cows right here at the farm.
So this is a very homemade, homegrown meal,
and the best part is, it's easy to make.
I can put it together before I go out
and milk the cows this evening.
And it can bake away, and dinner will be served
when I'm done with chores.
[gentle acoustic guitar music]
So to get started with our tart, I'm gonna make a filling.
We're gonna layer the potatoes with the kale
and the onion mixture, and then fold everything together
with the bacon.
It looks really pretty when you're putting it together,
and it looks really pretty when you're serving it as well.
I harvested these a few days ago
and then I let them cure in the sunshine,
so they could sort of get that papery outside.
They're so different than going to a grocery store in December
and getting an onion that was shipped across the country.
These have so much flavor and so much moisture in them,
it's just absolutely delicious.
And then I just take the bits of all my vegetables
and I put 'em in a pile.
I either put 'em in my compost or I give 'em to the chickens.
The chickens actually love the little bits of herbs
that I give them this time of the year.
And speaking of herbs, I'm gonna load this tart up
with some fresh herbs from the garden.
I love growing parsley, and because of that,
I decided, "Oh, why don't I grow 20 parsley plants this year?
I'll use it every day."
It's a lot of parsley to use.
So every different way I can find to use it,
I've been using it.
And in this dish, I'm just gonna chop up
about a good heaping tablespoon, maybe even two.
When I'm baking, I'm always really good about measuring
all of my ingredients really well.
But when I'm cooking, I wanna measure with my eyes,
with my nose, what I'm smelling, and with my heart
to see how much of an ingredient you should really be adding,
depending on the flavor, depending on your likes
and your dislikes.
You really should cook with all of your senses.
And then I'm gonna add some basil to this,
because I have it in the garden and it's delicious,
along with these other herbs.
But you can feel free to mix and match any herbs
that you have on your patio or in your garden,
or that you're finding at the farmers market.
Now, I'm just gonna slide these into a bowl
and get ready to microplane my garlic.
[insects chirping]
Microplaning is really just what the tool is called
that I'm using; it's kind of like a grater.
And it's a very fine grating.
Sometimes I use this for Parmesan cheese
or even if I'm doing something with ginger.
It's gonna give it a little bit more of a mellowy,
creamier flavor, and almost makes it like a beautiful paste.
If you're chopping your garlic and adding that to a recipe,
that can maybe be more pungent.
So how you're using your garlic
is determining the taste of the dish.
And I like using the microplane for salad dressings
and dishes like this, 'cause it's a little bit more mellow.
And now I'm gonna add some kale that I just wilted inside,
just to cook it down a little bit.
All right, now I'm gonna set the kale mixture off to the side.
And the moment I've been waiting for is to unwrap this cheese.
This is one of our cheddars that's about two months old,
and it's starting to really develop
some of those beautiful cheddar flavors.
And it's gonna be fantastic in this tart.
So I'm gonna start by just taking off the cheesecloth,
which we wrap it in.
We use cheesecloth in the aging process
to make it so the cheese can breathe,
'cause this is a living being, right?
And we want it to be able to breathe and age
and build character through that.
The color is just so beautiful.
The thing that I love about cheese,
especially the cheese that we're doing here,
is it's a way for me to capture the summertime,
capture what's happening in the pasture,
what's happening in the field, what's happening with the cows.
It's like canning, right?
You're canning your tomatoes in August.
This is me being able to capture my pastures in the summertime
to be enjoyed all year long.
You can feel the butter fat in the cheese.
And that's part of the Jersey characteristics,
is all of that beautiful butter fat.
And then, look at that.
It almost looks like it captured that July sunshine in there too.
I'm gonna cut it now into a wedge.
Look at that, oh.
It's incredibly rewarding
to be able to pick out the pastures for the cows,
move them every day, work with them every day,
have this relationship with them, and then milk them
and be able to make cheese, and then see the cheese
and cook with it.
This is a very, very exciting moment for me.
I'm gonna go ahead and grate this up,
and I think this is gonna add a really beautiful flavor
to our tart.
[upbeat folksy music]
All right, now you can just put your cheese in with your kale,
and the last thing we need to do to prep for the tart
is slice some of our garden fresh potatoes.
I don't use a mandolin anymore,
'cause I just cut off the tips of my fingers,
so I just slice 'em thin.
And that should be enough potatoes.
So now we're ready to start putting our tart together.
Continue layering your bacon all the way around the pan,
leaving part of the bacon out of the pan.
That's okay; we're gonna fold it over afterwards,
creating the top crust.
Now, go ahead and shingle your potatoes
all the way around the bottom, making one complete layer.
Add a good handful of the potato, kale, and cheese mixture
right on top of the potatoes.
Now, add another layer of potatoes.
Finish it off with the rest of the kale mixture.
Now, go ahead and fold the bacon over the top of your mixture.
This is gonna create the top crust.
And that's how easy this is.
This is a wonderful way to use up
all of those farm-fresh ingredients in one dish.
I'm gonna cook this on the grill.
I love cooking outside in the summertime.
It's gonna take about two hours,
which is gonna give me plenty of time to finish my chores,
and it'll be done just as soon as Chance gets home from work,
and we can enjoy a garden supper together.
[upbeat folksy music]